


with shortness of breath (you explained the infinite)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: if this love is pain (then darling let's love tonight) [3]
Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, FOUND FAMILIES FOR THE WIN, Fluff, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, POV Robbe, also surprise appearance by some buddies of ours from another Skam, background is that Sander and Robbe are living in the flat together, but he also loves his flat family, for Sander not Robbe, happiness, once again the Flat Family makes an appearance, robbe loves his mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21514330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: It is very easy to feel like Pluto, Robbe has realized. To feel alone and cold and forgotten on the edges of everyone’s solar systems, to be tiny and insignificant and unloved.Becoming something other than Pluto takes work. It takes inching your way back across the solar system, towards Earth, with each step towards happiness feeling as far away as the planets are from each other.His first step- to open up to Milan- takes him to Neptune, takes him into being remembered and hugged.His second step- to go to the therapist- takes him to Uranus, into increasing warmth and stability.His third step, to Saturn, to give himself a giant mass and a stable set of rings- well, he’s not the one to take it. Sander does, when he shows up, bruised and battered and all too alone. When he tells them the truth about everything and gives Robbe a goddamn reason for everything that’s happened.Robbe guesses that that was his step to take, in the end- he made the decision (though it wasn’t much of a decision at all), to forgive Sander and let him in. To let Sander enter his solar system and become a moon to whatever planet Robbe is on, to let him into his room and his life and take him as he is.
Relationships: Robbe Ijzermans/Sander Driesen, The Entire Flat Family
Series: if this love is pain (then darling let's love tonight) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550230
Comments: 12
Kudos: 132
Collections: Skam Belgium (Wtfock) ▶ Sander Driesen / Robbe Ijzermans





	with shortness of breath (you explained the infinite)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themoongirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoongirl/gifts).



> Title is from "Saturn" by Sleeping At Last.
> 
> So I watched the clip with Jens today and I still trust the wtFock writers but god, please let the Sander thing make sense because right now I'm just really fucking confused over what's going on with Sander. In the meantime, though, I just listened to a bunch of Ingrid Michaelson and Sleeping at Last and wrote this. Hope you all like!

_While collecting the stars, I connected the dots_

_I don’t know who I am, but now I know who I’m not_

_I’m just a curious speck that got caught up in orbit_

_Like a magnet it beckoned my metals toward it_

_Make my messes matter, make this chaos count_

_Let every little fracture in me shatter out loud_

**_-Sleeping At Last_ ** **, Jupiter**

It is very easy to feel like Pluto, Robbe has realized. To feel alone and cold and forgotten on the edges of everyone’s solar systems, to be tiny and insignificant and unloved.

Becoming something other than Pluto takes work. It takes inching your way back across the solar system, towards Earth, with each step towards happiness feeling as far away as the planets are from each other.

His first step- to open up to Milan- takes him to Neptune, takes him into being remembered and hugged. He’s still somewhat cold, still on the outside, but at least he knows there is someone who remembers. Someone who cares.

His second step- to go to the therapist- takes him to Uranus, into increasing warmth and stability.

His third step, to Saturn, to give himself a giant mass and a stable set of rings- well, he’s not the one to take it. Sander does, when he shows up, bruised and battered and all too alone. When he tells them the truth about everything and gives Robbe a goddamn reason for everything that’s happened.

Robbe guesses that that _was_ his step to take, in the end- he made the decision (though it wasn’t much of a decision at all), to forgive Sander and let him in. To let Sander enter his solar system and become a moon to whatever planet Robbe is on, to let him into his room and his life and take him as he is.

As for the fourth step, to take him to Jupiter, well- Robbe comes out to Jens a few days after Sander moves in. It goes rather well, if Robbe's honest, with Jens' reaction being nothing all too strange in the end. When Robbe comes out to Jens, he responds as he always does: rather casually, with a small smile as if nothing’s really changed.

When Jens finds out about the gay bashing, though, all hell breaks loose. Jens is about ready to go kill someone, and Robbe’s pretty sure he’s not joking when he says so. It takes a moment or two to get Jens calmed down, to get him to stop threatening the lives of the guys who hurt Robbe and Sander, and Robbe feels something warm building in his chest, fondness and gratefulness at Jens' reaction. 

He's even more thankful that when Robbe tells him no, that he’s going to the police instead, Jens immediately offers to go with him.

“You’re my best bro, man,” Jens says, “I want to be there for you. I want to help take down those assholes.”

Something lifts in Robbe’s chest. Yes, he has a boyfriend who loves him, and three great flatmates, but he’s missed his best friend. He’s missed the stupid antics and vlogs and support he used to have. Now he has it back.

Then Robbe, Zoe, and Sander go to the police, with Milan, Senne, and Jens at their sides, and, well, now Robbe's Mars, with a bit of water, with solid ground beneath his feet, so close to Earth.

-

Robbe hasn’t really had a family since he was a little kid. His father left him and his mom when he was ten, and then his mom was committed to the psychiatric facility when he was 15.

He loves his mom and he can’t wait for Christmas, when she’ll get out and he’ll get to introduce her to Sander, but an actual family? With family dinners and cuddles and the occasional movie night and bandaids and reassuring words?

He hasn’t had that in a long time, and neither has Sander, deprived of a family for even longer than Robbe has been.

They haven't had it until now, at least, with their flatmates and their “family” dinners on the days of the week when it can work- mostly Wednesdays and Sundays- that Robbe starts to feel like he has a family. That he and Sander have a place to stay with people who love and support them and have given them a home.

-

Sander gets a job the day after Zoe’s birthday party. He works three nights a week at a coffee shop down the road and it cuts down on the number of hours they can spend together, but it makes Sander happy anyway, giving him some way to give back to Milan. It makes him feel like he’s really contributing, and Robbe sees an almost overnight transformation in how comfortable Sander feels in the flat. There’d been something still amiss between him and the flat before he’d gotten that job- now that he has it, it’s like some puzzle piece slides in, like he slides into an orbit around Milan’s sun and finally clicks in as a planet in their flat's solar system and not just Robbe's own orbit.

And so in turn, Robbe goes to the coffee shop every time Sander works, gets coffee, and sits down around the same time as his break. Sander sits with Robbe for his break- it happens around 19:00- and they have dinner. Then after his break is over, Robbe heads back home, where he does homework or hangs out with Zoe and Milan or hangs out with Jens and the boys, who Jens gave stern talking to about everything they've joked about.

Sander gets home around 23:00 each night he works, at which point he collapses into Robbe’s arms, where Robbe is all too happy to hold him.

Robbe sleeps curled up with Sander every night, the two of them sharing his bed since Sander moved in. Sometimes they have sex. Sometimes they just cuddle. Sometimes Sander is the big spoon and sometimes Robbe is.

Whatever the case, Robbe feels utterly safe and loved in Sander’s arms, and he really hopes that it’s the same for Sander.

(In fact, part of what makes it so comfortable to Robbe is that he knows that Sander is safe. That he’s here, and not out on the streets, that he’s safe and comfortable and warm and fed. That Sander has a home like he never has before.

That the two of them _are_ each others’ homes.)

Making his way to Earth is less of an immediate thing than the other moments were. Instead, it's a bunch of small steps, kisses in bed and dinners and learning to hold hands in public without flinching.

-

He and Sander go to Jens' house to party with everyone- the Broerrs and the girls and even Senne.

The Broerrs- once Aaron and Moyo got their shit together- have really embraced Sander, just as they would have any girlfriend that Robbe brought in. Maybe even a bit more, as they're constantly bugging Robbe to bring Sander for a vlog or a challenge or whatever, in a sort of bro-esque way that they never teased Jens about with Jana.

Then he sees Britt there, in the background at the drink table, and a small knot of anger twists Robbe's gut.

To be honest, he hasn't really thought of her too much in the two months since Sander moved in. He hasn't had a reason to. But now that she's here, and he can see her, he can't help but get angry, because she kicked Sander out of the only home he had. He slept on the streets, in the skating park, nearly starved because she kicked him out.

Robbe gets why she wouldn't want to live with her ex. But kicking him out? When he had nowhere else to go?

Fuck. That's a lot. And it's not exactly something he's going to let slide.

"You kicked Sander out," Robbe says, tone flat, and it's not the beer in his veins that's making him stand up for Sander. It's that curl of anger in his gut, the kind that existed when those assholes first beat them up, the kind that he first felt when Sander showed up at the flat with that bruise under his eye that hadn't healed and had told Robbe and Milan why exactly his body hadn't had what it needed to fix itself. "Why?"

Britt fixes Robbe with a rather irritated stare, and he can kind of understand- he's the reason her boyfriend dumped her- but that doesn't make him any less mad at her. "Because he broke up with me. No reason to keep my ex living in my house."

"You kicked him out _onto the streets_ because he broke up with you?" Robbe questions, and something slips in her expression.

"I," she swallows. "I thought he had somewhere else to go. Some other friend. He's got those."

 _Not when you kicked him out_ , Robbe says, but all of a sudden, as much as he wants to fight her, he's unsure about revealing Sander's private information to his ex.

"He does," Zoe says, stepping up on Robbe's other side. There's something dark in her eyes when she says: "He's got a bunch of friends, now, who would never kick him out because they fought."

Robbe nods. Even if he wasn't in love with Sander- which he is, and he can't picture himself ever falling out of- he wouldn't kick Sander out. He just couldn't do that to anyone, much less someone he cared about.

Sander steps up, a cup of punch in hand, and Robbe's so proud of the fact that he barely flinches when he looks at Britt. "What's going on?" he asks, and Britt glances up at him, eyes wide.

"Sander," she says, "Where are you living, nowadays?"

"With Robbe," he says immediately, simple as that, and then leans in and presses a quick kiss to Robbe's cheek. "Speaking of which- Robbe, I've got something to show you."

"I'd love to see it," Robbe says, looking away from Britt. Zoe smiles at him as he turns and takes Sander's hand, letting Sander guide him through the crowd and out onto Jens' back porch, where it's quieter and no one's bumping into them.

"What did you want to show me?" Robbe says, and Sander leans in and presses a kiss to Robbe's lips.

"This," he says, and Robbe grins.

"I think that's absolutely beautiful," he says, looking into Sander's bright eyes, and Sander smiles as he leans back in. 

Then they kiss on Jens' back porch, Robbe's hands under Sander's shirt, Sander's arms around Robbe's neck, and Robbe's orbit drifts closer and closer to Earth as Sander makes him feel alive and loved in a way that he always dreamed about but never thought he could be.

-

Then, one Saturday, about a month and a half into Sander living at the flat, Sander kisses Robbe and tells him that he has a surprise. They leave the apartment and head down the streets of Antwerp to their destination, holding hands as they do so. (Robbe's not as scared anymore of just holding hands in public, even if he does hesitate to kiss Sander out on the main streets.)

Then Sander stops and covers Robbe’s eyes when they’re about a block away from their destination, but Robbe’s not stupid. He knows it probably has to do with the wall they spray painted months ago, if he goes by the streets they walked to get here. Still, a shiver of anticipation runs through him at the idea that Sander's doing this, whatever _this_ is, for him. He can't help but smile as Sander leads him forward, knowing that Sander has put together something for _him._

Then they stop, and Sander lets go of Robbe's eyes. “Tada,” he says, and Robbe opens his eyes to find a new painting on the wall.

And it’s him, up there on that wall. His face, with bright eyes and half-wild hair and even that scar painstakingly painted above his eye. His smile is half-turned upwards, as if in thought. There, beneath his face, read the words _You are not alone,_ superimposed over an explosion of color surrounding his face that almost resembles stardust. A supernova, maybe?

Whatever it is, he’s beautiful, no doubt about it. This was painted by someone who truly cared, who loved the subject they were painting, who saw something as beautiful as the stars above and decided to commit it to paint.

“You painted that?” Robbe asks, heart threatening to supernova in his own chest. “Of me?”

Sander nods, smile proud, and Robbe can’t resist the urge to lean in and kiss him. He pulls Sander in, hand starting on his jacket before slowly sliding back so that his whole arm is cupping Sander's neck, just like the time they kissed by the bike racks. Sander gladly responds, hand going to Robbe's waist, and Robbe could stand here forever, with this boy, orbiting together.

When they part Sander says: "I painted it after work for the past month. My shift only really went to 22:00 and I'd spend an hour afterward here, working on this. For you. Because I wanted to show you that I agreed with what you said when I moved in. About being there for each other, about our love being all that matters."

And Sander's smile is so proud, and so wide, and Robbe is so in love with this man. He leans forward and tucks his head into Sander’s shoulder, nuzzling his head in close, and Robbe is Earth, alive and solid and human, with the ability to grow and love. "Thank you," he says, voice low, and he doesn't say for what because there are so many things to thank Sander for.

"Thank _you_ ," Sander says into Robbe's hair, and he doesn't say what for either but it doesn't need to be said.

-

Sander introduces Robbe to one of his friends from art school when Robbe bikes over on Monday afternoon, meeting Sander in that same spot next to the bike rack when they kissed.

Sander's friend has got to be one of the tallest boys that Robbe has ever met, with a smile more blinding than anyone Robbe's ever met, save Sander. He has bright eyes and a face that speaks to both innocence and mischief, somehow at the same time.

"This is Eliott Demaury, Robbe. He moved here from France last year." Sander says with a smile, and then looks to Eliott. "And Eliott, this is my boyfriend, the most beautiful man in the world."

Robbe reaches out a hand to shake. "Nice to meet you," he says, and Eliott shakes his head with a bright smile that makes it hard to stay wary of him.

"Nice to meet you, too," Eliott says, French accent dripping from his words.

Sander nods. "Eliott was just suggesting that we go on a double date with him and his boyfriend, sometime."

Robbe's eyebrow shoots up. "His boyfriend?"

Eliott's smile gets somehow warmer. "Mon mec, oui. Lucas." He says Lucas' name like a prayer, in a way that spells utter devotion and love, in the same way that Sander says Robbe's name, sometimes. "Who _I_ think is the most beautiful man in the world. He'd love to grab food with you two, some time."

Robbe reaches out for Sander's hand, entwines their fingers together. "Sounds like a great idea to me," he says, smiling at Sander even as a small jolt of anxiety thuds through his heart. Four of them, together, on a date won't lead to the same kind of ending that he and Sander's date did before, even if they venture beyond the coffee shop and into the wide world outside of their small area of the city.

Eliott nods. "Merci. I'll set it up with Lucas." His phone buzzes and he looks down at it, his face absolutely lighting up when he sees whoever's texting. "And that's Lucas, reminding me about dinner. See you next time, Sander." Then Eliott walks away with a smile and a wave, a veritable bounce in his step, and Sander and Robbe are left standing there.

Sander turns to Robbe and his smile is as bright as the moon, shining and beautiful as he is. (Robbe is the Earth and Sander is the moon and they are both rotating, revolving, evolving.)

"Speaking of which- Eliot's been telling me about a group of people he's friends with," Sander says, "Queer people like us, about our age. They're all from a bunch of different countries, but a lot of them are artists- that's how he met them all."

"I hope said artists have friends that I can get along with," Robbe says, and Sander nods quickly.

"Of course there are. Lucas would be bored, otherwise- from what Eliott says, he's not exactly the artistic type, either. A lot of them moved here and brought along their girlfriends or boyfriends, or their girlfriends or boyfriends moved here and brought _them_ along with."

Robbe arches an eyebrow. "How many fucking queer friends are in this group?"

Sander glances up at the sky, brow crunching in thought. "Well, I can't remember all of the names as I've only met a couple of them, the ones that Eliott hangs out with most often, but as far as I can remember there's Eliott, Lucas, Nico, who i've actually met, Nico's boyfriend, Even, who along with Eliott is trying to make some sort of short film, and Even's boyfriend. Then there's also a couple from Germany and a couple from Spain I can never remember the names of. The ones from Spain are both girls, though, I know that."

Sander looks back at Robbe, whose eyes are wide. "That many gay people are all friends? Here in Antwerp?"

"Well, a lot of them are bi or pan, but yeah."

"And they want to be friends?"

"Well, the ones I've met would love to meet you. Eliott and Lucas, obviously, but Nico and Even said they'd wanted to, as well." His gaze goes a bit soft as his finger reaches up and traces a soft path down Robbe's neck. "If you're up to it."

There's something warm and hopeful in Robbe's chest, at the idea of all these people being friends, at them being friends with Sander and Eliott. At the idea of having someone gay that they're friends with beyond Milan, who kind of feels like an older brother or even a parent.

"I'd love to," Robbe says, and Sander smiles with that moon-bright smile.

"Then I'll make plans," Sander says before leaning in and kissing him, just like he did a few months ago, Sander's portfolio under his arm, the earth cool and beautiful around them, but this time there's Christmas just around the corner and they are fully together and world is settled into orbit and so, so bright.

**Author's Note:**

> So, anyone want a sequel where Robbe and Sander get to meet the other Evaks? Just me? No? Alright, then.


End file.
